


8r8k or 8e 8roken

by sunbreaksdown



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Dream Bubbles, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-19
Updated: 2011-09-19
Packaged: 2017-10-23 21:20:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/255088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunbreaksdown/pseuds/sunbreaksdown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And so here you are: dead. There should probably be a throbbing in your chest, or most likely a deep-seated ache, like poison's got to the root of something and can only be scraped out, but there's nothing.</p><p>(Vriska and Terezi dream bubble melodrama.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	8r8k or 8e 8roken

     You know it's not real when you look down at your chest and there isn't thick, dank blue staining the orange. You've spent your life entertaining a lot of delusions, but the matter of your own mortality is something you've never lied to yourself about. Perhaps it's because death is bigger than you are, or maybe you just haven't had the time to properly comprehend the situation yet. That last part makes you smile, because when it comes down to it, time is all you have now. You don't know how far this so-called eternity will stretch on, whether the afterlife will be as fleeting as your life itself was, but it doesn't seem to matter now that you have so many memories to wade through.

     It barely even feels as if they belong to you. You watch the pieces of your short, miserable life flash before you, around you, and you're an observer, not making so much as a ripple in the waves of regret that unfold before you. And it's easy to convince yourself that you regret what you've done when you're watching yourself do these things as an outsider. You can see where you went wrong — no, not where you went wrong. Where the situation gave you no choice but to raise your hand, to act as you did, because the world was always against you. But what could you do about it? Your lusus had to feed, and you had to find some way to survive in your society. It was break or be broken.

     And so here you are: dead. There should probably be a throbbing in your chest, or most likely a deep-seated ache, as if poison's got to the root of something and can only be scraped out, but there's nothing. You're apart from your body, or at least the weightless illusion of a form that you retain in death. All of the joints work and the imagined tendons pull at muscles, making you move, but the worlds seem to shift around you, like you're at the very heart of their existence. You've always acted like that, full of false bravado, like you've got your own orbit, but when it comes down to it, it doesn't mean a damn thing. Putting yourself in the centre of anything, a universe, attention, a memory, just means that you can't travel through it properly, and everything keeps on turning around you.

     Most of your friends are dead. If they ever were your friends in the first place. You see them in bubbles, far away, and you don't greet the news with much more than a flat, unsurprised _huh_. You never try approaching them, never interfere with their memories, because you know they wouldn't want you to. Hell, they're probably glad of your death, thinking it will make things easier for the ones left behind. And maybe it will. Who's to say? All you know is that you were only ever trying to come out the victor, to prove yourself a hero, and they would've reaped the spoils because of that. But there's no use dwelling on that now. What's done is done and the dead are dead, except for in the case of Aradia, and you really don't want to have to wrap your head around all of that time-skewering bullshit.

     Ghosts have always creeped you the hell out, and that doesn't change now that you are one. Maybe you'll haunt somebody. Maybe you'll make their lives a living hell by swishing the slime in the recuperacoons when they're not looking and slam cupboard doors when their backs are turned. That'll show them. That will teach them to—

     You wonder what it will teach them. You wonder what right you have to be pissed off at them. It's disturbingly clear to you that you were the one causing problems, even if it was for their own good. It's not what they've done that makes you grind the teeth you no longer really have control over together. It's what they're going to do, because sooner or later, and most likely sooner, they're all going to forget you. You can't fault them for it. You tried to forget yourself for much of your life, tried to pretend that you were Marquise Spinneret Mindfang, not a goddamn wiggler tied down by their insatiable lusus.

     You honestly can't tell if you want those who are left to succeed against the impossible odds stacked against them, or if you want them to end up as dead as you are. There's a bitter streak running through you, and you remind yourself that death wasn't a big deal for you. You'd done it before, and it loses some of its grasp without finality at its core, and it's only _how_ you died that pisses you off. If you couldn't orchestrate your friends' deaths then you wouldn't want them dying, and you barely even muster up the resolve to want to do that much. Your friends are off-limits, or at least they were always supposed to be, and you guess that you should've tried playing the part of a hero for something other than the glory.

     Ever since you exsanguinated on your back, beaten to a bloody pulp, you've been a god. Which is ridiculous, really, because you were only a kid; you should've only got to be one or the other, not both sides of a coin at once. Your arm grew back and your eye reformed, and ever since then your heart beat to the steady rhythm of _heroic_ - _just_ , _heroic_ - _just_ , _heroic_ - _just_ , and it's nothing short of bad luck that caused it to stop pounding on the first beat. You stole too much good luck. That's the problem. You took everyone else's good luck, and never stopped to make any for yourself.

     You wonder who the fuck you're kidding.

     There isn't anyone around for you to act tough in front of until quite suddenly there is, and you know that there's no point in acting like your second and final death was anything but just. She's always been able to smell lies on you.

     You find, suddenly, that you're sitting on the crumpled ruin of an old wall, one moon in front of you, the other throwing your shadow forward. You don't recall this place exactly, or at least can't work out what the significance is; it could be anywhere on Alternia, but you assume that it must hold some importance, because it's your memory. You don't know how you know it's yours, but it certainly isn't hers. She just doesn't hold as much sway over the bubbles. Probably because she isn't dead yet, only dreaming.

     You confirm this for yourself when you spare her the briefest of glances. Her eyes are still scorched red, redder than the sun, not empty and white like yours must be. You did that to her eyes, you think, and she did this to yours. You felt pretty fucking vindicated about it at the time, but now, you can't wring a drop of pride out of yourself. You feel like _you_ should be blind, because your eyes hold nothing but a waning glow, and combined with the odd weightlessness of your lack of body, everything feels out of touch, out of sight, out of every sense.

     Steeling yourself, you look again, if only to see if she looks back. You know that she doesn't need to, that she can probably smell and taste how you feel, what you're thinking — or what you were thinking and how you felt when this memory wasn't a memory, was only just unfolding. You're not certain how it works. What you do see is that her cane is resting across her knees, perfectly white, like it's carved from bone, no drops of blue tainting it.

     You hate that goddamn cane, and not because you stare at it and think _man, it looks different when it's not being pushed through my back_. You hate it because it reminds you of how willing she used to be to go along with your games, your stupid treasure hunts and piratey campaigns. She was willing to do all of that, and at the time, you didn't think anything of it. You didn't even consider showing gratitude. It was just a given, because you assumed that out of everyone, she'd be the one who was left there at the end, always one step ahead of you but never out of reach.

     You used to snatch that cane from her and run off with it, and she'd pretend to be blind, pretend that she couldn't catch up with you without it. It's inappropriate, but you smile. If you took the cane from her now she'd probably do that exact same thing. Or she would've, if things hadn't spiralled out of control, if you hadn't set disaster after disaster into motion, leaving your friends crippled, dead, and blind.

     You glance around at your surroundings again, trying to focus on them. It's difficult to gather up the energy to care about what's around you when all you want to know is why she's here. Why she thinks she has time enough to waste dreaming. Your first thought is that she's here to laugh at you, but then you realise that's redundant. She laughs at anything. She'd laugh at a brick wall. You shouldn't feel particularly deserving of her laughter, no matter how derisive it may be.

     “Hey,” you say eventually, like she might not have noticed your presence had you not spoken up. One of you had to say something sooner or later, and you feel like you've put her at a disadvantage by having had the guts to do so first.

     “Spidertroll,” she replies curtly, but then loses some of the edge of her words when she inclines her head to the side. She's trying to distance herself from you on purpose, using that ridiculous nickname. “How's being dead?”

     Somehow, you know that she's not trying to mock you. You know that she's genuinely curious. Still, you snap back at her.

     “How's being asleep?” And it's such a stupid thing to say, because you know the answer. You've dreamt before. You groan and she laughs, head tilted back, a cacophony of cackles cutting into what should be you resting in peace, but you don't care, don't care at all. For a moment, it's almost like how things were, or how they could've been. “Shut up, Pyrope. I know that was dumb.”

     She's still laughing. You reach out, thwacking the back of one hand against her shoulder. Physical contact does work here, you soon learn, no matter how disembodied you feel. You know what comes next. She'll rub what you just said in your face, pointing out how ridiculous it truly was, and you'll huff and grumble, knowing that there's no way to get her back. Not properly.

     “I'm not going to apologise for killing you.”

    ... okay. You weren't expecting that. You slump forward a little, supposing that it's alright. Sometimes these things just happen. Sometimes friends mutilate and decapitate and murder other friends. You won't give her the satisfaction of knowing, but you doubt there's anyone else you would've rather had killed you. You know, if you absolutely _had_ to die such a lousy death and there was no way around it, no way for you to cheat your way out of that one. You think it's a fitting end, a turning of tables; hell, you've read Mindfang's journals enough times, have lived by them with your every breath. You should've seen it coming.

     This is just Redglare getting her revenge on Mindfang centuries late. It makes you feel better thinking about it like that, like you're part of some great legend. This was your fate, not simply a monumental fuck-up on your part. But you do wonder, at times, if the legend of Mindfang and Redglare was as great as you made it out to be. Redglare took an arm and seven eyes, burnt a fleet down into driftwood and had Mindfang's lusus devoured whole. Mindfang had the rustbloods put a lawful woman to a death only the most abhorrent deserve, and took her dragon from her. Maybe they pushed and pulled at one another a little too much. Maybe their hate was too blackened for anything to ever come of it, anything other than misery.

     You and Terezi were always better than that. You dressed as pirates, raided sunken ships, and you even feigned interest in punishing the unjust because you knew it entertained her. You had a rivalry going strong with her, but you could always set that aside and let the friction cast sparks between you as you worked together. The two of you were the real scourge on the seas, on the land. Together you could've torn Alternia to blackened shreds, if Alternia was a place that existed anymore and you were both on the same side of the life-death line.

     You don't tell her any of this. She knows. She has the cunning and you have the ability, and she's always known you better than anyone else. She doesn't make excuses for you, doesn't try to write off the things you do. She sticks to what she believes in, to her concept of justice, and you suppose you can admire her for that much.

     You don't tell her that, either, and you very much doubt that she realises it.

     “What are you doing here, anyway?”

     You kick out your feet, heels bumping against the wall on the return journey. If you move them quickly enough, you can imagine blurs of blue blood dripped down on the toes. Your wings flutter behind your back, and you think that flying was pretty damn cool. It's another thing to miss about being alive, because floating aimlessly just doesn't have the same sort of appeal. When you speak to her, you almost sound dismissive, like you don't care why she's there and just want her gone. Lucky for you that she's used to your bullshit and doesn't make much of a move, other than to cross her arms over her knees and lean forward the slightest amount.

     She shakes her head. She doesn't know. And that's okay, because you're dead, and things like that shouldn't matter to you anymore. You continue to look around, because you're expecting something to happen still. Something dramatic, with a flourish. An unlocked memory that paints a clear picture in your mind, helps you see what you did wrong and puts you at peace with it all, with yourself.

     But nothing happens. It's just you and her on the remnants of a wall on Alternia before you all saw to it that the world ended. It's a little cold, and that pisses you off, because the dead shouldn't have to deal with fluctuating temperatures. You sit there, silent, taking your time. It takes you far too long to realise that she doesn't have the same luxury of not keeping track of the minutes as you do, because she's bound to wake up at any moment now. Time runs between her fingers like shifting desert sands, as it should, and she's probably grasping at the last few grains in order to stay there.

     And then you're angry. You're beyond frustrated at her, at the situation, and the brunt of what you're feeling slams into you until you feel like you're back in your own, solid body again. It's not the fact that she killed you that makes you angry, or the fact that she's just sitting there, not saying or doing anything. It's the fact that she's going to up and leave, and then you'll be stuck there, dead and alone. You slam a fist down against the wall as you turn to face her, and it crumbles under the force, creating a tiny crater beneath your fist.

     She looks at you then, gaze empty, hollow, and as sightless as it is, you still feel that she's staring right into you. All the blood that's no longer in your body runs colder than the night air that bites at your skin, and she grins at you, each one of her misshapen teeth sliding in between two others, ill-fitting. They gleam under the moonlights, and you think what she's saying with the cutting expression is that she wants you to be angry, to be angry at her, because the both of you need to get this resentment out of your systems. You've both done a lot, both done terrible things by anyone's definition, and you need to get past this stage of bickering like grubs, blaming your problems on everyone but yourselves. You need to face up to the fact that you are growing up, whether you like it or not.

     Or at least she does. You look at her shadow and imagine it greater than it is, horns rising much further than they do now, spiralling like towers. She's going to grow up, and she's going to deal with a lot more shit than what you've already put her through. You, you've got nothing to do but linger over a present that will last forever.

     “Backstabber—” you hiss, meaning it in more ways than one. If only she'd had the guts to face you, to meet your gaze while she did it. It wouldn't even be difficult for her, because she can't see a fucking thing anyway. “Backstabber, backstabber, _backstabber_...”

     And then she's not taking your screamed accusations any more, and she's got her hands at your shoulders, trying to wrestle you off, fingers digging deep into your shoulder blades, and you don't care how stupid this is, how pointless; it feels real to you, and that's all that matters. You bring a hand up to her throat and you remember doing this before. It wasn't so rough, though, back then. You recall grasping at her neck, but it had been playful. Harmless. She'd stolen your pirate's hat and ran through a field with it, almost tripped over a crumbled wall in an attempt to get away, and you'd bounded after her, tackling her to the ground. You'd been kids then, believing that the whole world was yours.

     You smile thickly at the memory, and she tenses in your grasp. You can't bring yourself to do any such thing, and just fall slack. From the way you were positioned, almost leaning over her in an attempt to choke the life out of her, it just so happens that you end up pressed against her. For a moment, your chest lurches, because it surprises you to find that she's all warmth; but that's all an illusion, you soon learn. The only warmth radiates from your blood, and that pours out of your chest in thick, heavy surges. You cling to her, eyes wide, stinging. It doesn't hurt, but you aren't going to let go.

     You want her to feel it, to understand what she's wrought. You want it to soak into her clothing, her skin. You want her to wake up and still smell it, no matter how the others assure her that her outfit is clean, that there isn't a speck of blue on her anywhere. You want her to breathe in and taste it in the back of her throat.

     Her arms wrap around you, and you shudder and shake with more than blood loss. You are delirious, suddenly uninhabited in your own mind, and you murmur _backstabber, backstabber, backstabber_ , into her shoulder as her arms wrap around you, holding you in a way that proves none of this is real at all. You've known that all along, but somehow, this display of tenderness from her cements it into the obscure, winding reality that's become the very fibre of your being.

     “The humans put their dead in corpse boxes and bury them,” she tells you, running her fingers through your hair, “Like lost pirate treasure.”

     You seethe through grit teeth, unable to relax against her, unable to push her away. The blood soaks into her shirt where your chests press together, and you need to make sure it stays that way.

     You need to make sure that it leaves a stain forever, and you need to know that she won't forget you.


End file.
